|
EXPORTING Filipino products to Europe just got easier
as the European Union (EU) has adopted a new regulation on its
Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) scheme, allowing the
Philippines to enjoy preferential access to the union’s market
along with 175 other developing countries.
The scheme will provide
non-reciprocal preferential access to the union’s market through
reduced tariffs.
EU Trade Commissioner Peter
Mandelson on Monday confirmed that the scheme, a vital tool of
Europe’s pro-development trade policy, will still be in effect
from 2009 to 2011.
“The continuation of GSP will
ensure stability and predictability for beneficiaries and
traders in the EU and developing countries,” Mandelson said.
The standard scheme provides
preferential treatment to developing countries such as the
Philippines on over 6,300 tariff lines, while the “GSP plus” is
a special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good
governance, that offers additional tariff reductions to support
vulnerable developing countries in their ratification and
implementation of relevant international conventions.
The Philippines, one of the top
20 users of the scheme, has heavily benefited from the program. The
country’s exports under the scheme stood at 862 million Euros in
2007, a 9-percent increase compared with last year and the highest
recorded since 1998.
Moreover, the average utilization
rate is now above the global average, as it reached 56 percent in
2007 from 44 percent in 1998. Of the 5.6 billion Euros of Philippine
exports to the union in 2007, about 16 percent benefited from the
scheme.
“The Philippines will continue
to benefit from either reduced-duty or duty-free entry for many
products, and no sector will be graduated from GSP for the
Philippines from 2009-2011,” Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, head
of the European Commission Delegation in Manila, said.
--Llanesca T. Panti
|
